Osian's Auction Catalogue Creative India Series 1 Bengal | December 2011

Absorbing the Perfect Storm looking back, the first major financial meltdown Osian’s has faced in a decade has been a blessing in disguise. Despite the damage and days of humiliation, it has radically transformed and strengthened the institution towards better pursuing and fulfilling its vision. However, before moving forward it is imperative the art market, our fraternity and the wider public understand the facts and underlying ideas pertaining to what actually happened, especially given our relative silence since June 2010. First of all it is fair to say Osian’s did initially grow too fast, in too many semi-linked areas, without enough buffers, and in the absence of solid specialized administration and cash liquidity foundations necessary for the scale and diversity taken on. naturally during a period of financial boom these gaps did not seem insurmountable, rather, their burden was only felt with the arrival of the recession. The failure to recognize this was solely mine. Whether I blame the blind-spots created during success, the temporary lack of discipline in institution-building, circumstance, or the inherent difficulty of the actual tasks taken on, the fact remains that both Osian’s and myself were rendered deeply vulnerable once a major downturn set in. Secondly, the core nature of our growth was based on the vast accumulation and systematic collation of relatively illiquid cultural assets, with cash reserves always inadequate and mostly generated post asset-accumulation. This led to a perpetual shortfall of cash which was increasingly filled by leveraging or equity infusions. Further, the intent was never simply to sell the assets, but to extract their knowledge- base and then structure possible revenue streams from the dissemination of this knowledge. naturally, this medium- long term infrastructure-building activity required much more time and buffers than envisaged. Thirdly, when the art object was forced to be sold, irrespective of its quality, the distress nature of the sale worsened the inherent illiquidity of the asset, virtually to junk status. This position was further aggravated by the low confidence and the narrow nature of the Modern & Contemporary Indian art market [Please Refer to Table 1], the significant share of antiquities and non-exportable items in the Osian’s – Connoisseurs of art Collection (over 35% of the total collection by value), along with a vast number of relatively low-valued items of popular culture and film memorabilia whose Indian market was/is still relatively immature in financial terms. added to this, the high-profile awareness in the market of Osian’s cash crunch and the knowledge of its desperate need to sell certain items did little to mitigate the situation. TaBle 1 Top 10 artists according to the Total global Public auction Sales (InR & %) OSIAN’s Version 2.00 Rebuilding After the Perfect Storm Source: Osian’s eCOn Data Bank & archive [Complete global public auction database, June 1987 – november 2011] 1989 - 2011 2006 - 2011 Rank artist Total Public auction Sales InR % Total Public auction Sales InR % 1 Souza, Francis newton 4,078,549,888 13.64 3,551,986,741 14.01 2 Husain, Maqbool Fida 3,996,423,817 13.37 3,258,373,892 13.07 3 Raza, Syed Haider 2,935,248,738 9.82 2,631,537,234 10.04 4 Mehta, Tyeb 1,785,732,658 5.97 1,627,226,121 6.06 5 gupta, Subodh 1,309,615,853 4.38 1,304,639,942 4.66 6 Ramkumar 1,261,683,207 4.22 1,029,048,222 4.27 7 Padamsee, akbar 986,424,331 3.30 800,440,273 3.36 8 gaitonde, Vasudeo S. 946,082,896 3.17 880,509,807 3.24 9 Swaminathan, Jagdish 818,613,116 2.74 714,222,798 2.75 10 Broota, Rameshwar 468,665,167 1.57 437,167,166 1.61 Sub Total 18,587,039,671 62 16,235,152,196 63 # For the period ending 30 Sep. 2011